Appendicitis Journey

I was so upset by what had happened, but the only thing I could think about was if my mom and sister was okay. As we arrived to the emergency room, I didn’t really feel any pain and thought I wasn’t hurt. Since the initial x-ray at the emergency room showed that there was nothing wrong with me, I assumed that I would still be able to participate in my normal school activities. However, within the first week of school, I had a debilitating pain in my back that would leave me feeling as if I was frozen. The agonizing pain prevented me from being able to take deep breaths, turn my neck, or move my arms, let alone carry a full backpack or participate in the marching

March 15th, 2010, was a completely normal day. As normal as any day is for a twelve year old homeschooler. I was home with my oldest sister Brittany who was twenty at the time and I was just finishing up my homework for the day. After finishing up my math work I went to go watch television in the living room. Brittany was in her room and my parents didn't get home until later because of work. A few hours into my movie, my stomach started to hurt. Since I was twelve I didn't no the differences of pain so I just left it alone for a while. Later in the day my abdomen was aching so much I couldn't even get off the couch. After wailing for Brittany to call Mom I was sent to the emergency room in an ambulance with severe abdomen pain. After several hours in the ER and multiple tests, doctors found nothing. I was sent home and was told to take Tylenol for the pain. Once I got home, it didn't hurt anymore so I thought they were right and that I could just go on with my crazy life as a twelve year old. I was wrong. Two months after, I got the same

During my grade first year in high school I was quite shy and only had friends that I had known from elementary school and through baseball academy. The year was going decent until just after my birthday in the spring, when I started to get random stomach pains. They started off as just an aching pain but slowly with time became more serious and painful, almost as if you were getting stabbed with a knife. As the pains got worse I started missing school in order to try and recover from what I thought at the time was just a stomach flu. After my first couple weeks off school my parents had a suspicion that maybe this was something worse than a stomach flu so they took me to go see a general practitioner. After the GP did some tests, she wasn’t quite sure what was wrong so she referred me to a local Pediatrician. Again, after seeing the pediatrician and having some tests done there was still no diagnosis for what could be causing the pain. The most plausible explanation was that I must have had bacteria in my intestines that isn’t usually supposed to be there, and because

In addition to the early encounters of frequently having to attend the doctor’s office, the start of my eighth grade year came the beginning of a new challenge. The

Growing up, I was ill and in the hospital frequently. Most of these instances were due to Crohn’s disease, but my first trip to the hospital had nothing to do with my stomach or immune system. For my eighth birthday I had gotten my ears pierced. I was extremely paranoid about the earring falling out and the hole closing up. This resulted in me forming a habit of pushing the backs of the earrings on as hard as I could. Eventually, I realized that I could no longer feel the backs of my earrings. I tried to take the earrings out to change them, but they would not come out of my ears. I decided that I wasn’t worried about it, because at least I knew they weren’t going to fall out. When I finally told my mom, she wasn’t able to get the earrings

A few years back it was the second week of grade seven I went to the bathroom and when I got out the right side of my body got a sharp pain. It happened just before dance class and I was running late already so I decided to just pop some advil. Halfway through the dance the advil started to wear off and I could tell because there was the sharp pain in my side again. I just shook it off and finished the class and then went home. I told myself it would go away tomorrow and if it didn’t i would get it looked at by a doctor. I woke up the next day and the pain didn’t go away it just got worse. Luckily it was Saturday so i went to the walk in clinic. The doctor looked me over and told me he thought I had a bladder or kidney infection and that I had to go to the hospital for some test and antibiotics of some sort. I didn’t find our rill I got to the hospital that they would give them to me through IV. It was funny before I walked into the walk in clinic I asked my mom ”do I have to get any needles”? and she replied no. But then here I was with these numbing patches stuck on the inside of my arms so I wouldn't feel the needle go in. I got the IV in and they hooked me up with the antibiotics.

Around the end of January I began to feel ill. I was becoming weaker, I couldn’t even stand in the shower by myself. I lost around 10 pounds too. In the beginning of February, I went to the doctor with my mom. The doctor said we shouldn’t worry about it and it was probably just the flu. She also took a couple blood tests just in case it was something else. My mom took me to work with her, because she didn’t want to leave me alone at home. Later on that day, the doctor called my mom and told her to bring me into the hospital as soon as possible. At the time I had no idea what diabetes was. I was only 8 years old. It was February 9, 2007, and I was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes. I ended up staying in the hospital for that whole week, and stayed

The ER doctor came back after the test were done and told us that I was not bleeding internally, but I am anemic and I have extremely low Iron. He then prescribed me some iron pill and a stronger painkiller to help. By this time I had missed eight days of school and was falling behind. I became stressed and frustrated. Days where I think I could make it through the day, I could not. An hour or so I’d be back in my bed crying because the pain was too much. This year was the worst for me.

Kennedy was enrolled at the Edward Devotion School in Brookline for his elementary years. For grade four, he was educated at Noble and Greenough Lower School and the Dexter School. The family moved to New York in 1927, which enrolled young Jack in Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys, from grade five to seven. Then, at age 13, Kennedy attended Canterbury School in Connecticut, which he had to withdraw due to an appendectomy.

On the eve of my seventeenth birthday, I was having a birthday party with my family, and I was not feeling well. My asthma had been bad for the past few months, but seemed to be worsening. I even had to leave my party for a little bit to take an aerosol treatment. That seemed to help, but only for about thirty minutes. I started to wheeze again, and I was not able to catch my breath. I have had asthma all of my life and have been in the hospital several times for exacerbations. After my family had left, my parents knew I needed to go to the emergency room. I took my rescue inhaler right before my parents and I left to go to the emergency room. We ended up going to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Once I arrived, there was a long line ahead of me, but a triage nurse listened to my wheezing and sent me straight to the front. The nurses seemed panicked when they took me back to a critical care section of the ER. When I got in a room, I knew it was serious because there were five nurses and two doctors. I ended up staying at Children’s Hospital for a week and being on oral steroids for four months. Because of my asthma, I missed a lot of school during my junior year. I was on oral steroids for a long period of time, so it began to weaken my immune system.

In this study, out of 112 patients operated for acute non perforated appendicitis, 72 patients were male and 40 patients were female, a ratio of 1.8:1. The patients' age ranged from 18 to 55 years with a mean age of 26 years, the majority of cases lie in a range between 20-32 years. As shown in Table 1, there is no significant difference regarding patients' age, sex, medical comorbidities (diabetes, liver disease, renal disease, hyperlipidemia, heart disease), fever, leukocytosis, radiologic findings (appendiceal diameter, presence of free fluid) or operative time between the two groups.

When you’re young, the most common injuries are: a broken arm, a sprained ankle, or a skinned knee and elbow. Not a ruptured appendix. In fact, the chance of developing appendicitis is about seven to fourteen percent. Although it is most prevalent in children and young adults, and one of the most common operations today, it was unfamiliar to my parents.

Prior to my own experience with illness, neither the physical pain nor the crippling uncertainty illness could provide was ever very clear to me. In my first semester of college, I was diagnosed with viral meningitis. The time following my hospitalization was met with a setback in my academics accompanied with an unsettled feeling towards my health. Despite advisors encouraging me to change majors and career paths, I persevered through because I knew as a patient I had endured pain that was far greater from what I was experiencing in school. However two years later, this same feeling of uncertainty washed over me during a visit with my family doctor.

This sense of intellectual curiosity, combined with my desire to help others, is the key factor that fuels me and my journey in becoming a competent physician. Though I have faced much adversity in my life, I have learned to be adaptable and resilient. One of the most challenging situations in my life occurred during medical school. After being misdiagnosed with Wilson disease at the end of my second year, I experienced an unexpected delay in my medical school studies.

The day that i got appendicitis was really scary for me and my parents. At night I first I started to feel extreme pain in my stomach and then a few hours later started throwing up a lot. I threw up about 40 times in the night. After that my parents took me to the doctor and they tested me for appendicitis. I went to urgent care and they said that they could not help me there because it was too serious so we went the the hospital.